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Daidoji Michihira
Daidoji Michihira of House Hiramichi was the youngest son of Daidoji Hira, the youngest brother of Daidoji Daimyo Daidoji Kamei. Michihira was the founder of the Hiramichi vassal family. Secrets of the Crane, pp. 31-32 Hira's Maddened Behaviour In 520 his father Hira began to act erratically, exhausting the patience of Kamei. The daimyo ordered his brother to commit seppuku, but Hira fled along with forty-four bushi from the Shiro Daidoji guard, leaving a message behind: "You did not set a date for my death, brother. Seek me in the Uebe Marshes if you wish to hasten it." Secrets of the Crane, p. 31 Smugglers The exiled Hira was forced to rely on illegal sources for supplies of food and war material. Michihira found unscrupulous ronin traders who were willing to finance the revolters. Secrets of the Crane, p. 32 Foxfire War Incensed, Kamei sailed down the coast to the Uebe Marshes to chase his brother. In the unfamiliar terrain, his troops were slaughtered during the Foxfire War with trap-laying and ambush strategies developed by Hira. After several months, Kamei retired to Shiro Daidoji, and found Hira's body in his former quarters, dead by seppuku. Arranged around him was a model depicting the most treacherous ambush points in the Marshes in the same scale as those in the Daidoji Library, and the message: "Do not let the food and drink of peace make the belly of the Daidoji grow fat. Seek my son in the marshes." Kamei retired as a monk, and his daughter and heir, Daidoji Kasako, hunted Yasuhira. Within three years she had brought her cousin to bay. Yasuhira was captured and executed, surrounded by new woodland models and maps and the instruction: "My brother Shigehira and my men spit at you from the Wall above the Ocean." Changing Sides Shigehira followed the Blood feud against Kasako and his followers from the mountain range. Michihira decided to change his loyalties, wondering if he was right to follow his father's mad path. Michihira began to use his underground connections to ferret information regarding his brothers' troop movements to the Daidoji Daimyo. Kasako's younger brother Daidoji Hanzo was the commander of the Daidoji troops who chased and killed Shigehira. With his death the war was concluded. Aftermath Those troops that had helped the current daimyo defeat Hira's followers, were proclaimed the Hiramori family by the current daimyo, Daidoji Kasami, as vassals to the Daidoji. The family was named the "Forest Hira," an ironic joke at the traitorous Hira's expense. Michihira mad a last voyage and visited all his contacts and gifted them with a bamboo cage filled with porcelain songbirds, which later he used to gather them as followers through a subtle blackmail. Hiramichi Daimyo Michihira was pardoned for his involvement in the uprising. He presented Kasami with a list of his underworld allies, and requested to join the Hiramori. She did not want to compromise the Hiramori in such shady dealings, and granted him his own vassal family, the Hiramichi, or "Hira of the paths." His ring of smugglers swore allegiance to Hiramichi, including several former Mantis, who granted indispensable connections with the Mantis isles. Their ancestral home was a fortified keep, known as "Songbird's Cage", on the foothills along the coast overlooking Mura Sabishii Toshi. Legacy Michihira left behind writings comparing the economic arena to a battlefield and likewise outlining the value of economic pressure in warfare. Tax evasion, contraband arms, denial of supplies, bribery of soldiers and generals: all were explained as strategies of war. Hiramichi rely on the Daidoji code of honor, so they did not stoop to underhanded or shady dealings unless it could benefit the Crane as a whole in desperate situations. Hiramichi Michihira